Everything I’ve learned how to do better

Porn Spam and the search for Links

I noticed this morning that a comment had made its way into my queue for moderation on one of my rarely updated sites this morning. When I went to moderate it, I saw as I expected that it was spam and filled with links to porn sites. It had the usual “lesbian licking party” with some link to some url that specializes in lesbian licking parties. As I deleted the comment, I have to admit, for a split second I thought “I like lesbian licking parties… I wonder if this site is any good…”

Now, for those reading, I didn’t go and check out the site. I stay away from that shit. However, it did occur to me that I delete all the spam I get pretty quickly because there is nothing in it for me to keep that comment. It’s filled with junk and I don’t want it on my site. However, taking the idea a little further, what if this site gave me free access to it’s paid content? Now, I’m going beyond porn here, what if sites that wanted links just went to the site owners and said “Hey, we’ll give you a month’s free account if you let us do some nasty, link-filled commenting in your system? What if SEO experts just offered up free goodies to people when they needed more links? It’s better than buying them because in the case of free memberships, those memberships have no value outside of the people who are willing to pay for them, so giving them out to a handful of people, in order to get a truckload to sign up, is a positive exchange.

Now, a non-porn specific way to do this would be an SEO going to a handful of sites that pass decent PR, and working out a deal, some free service in exchange for the ability to get any number of links posted on the original site. That way, the SEO gets his links all over the web, and can probably give out the same piece of advice to almost everyone, a simple “advanced” eBook or something. Maybe 30 minutes of personal 1-on-1 advice, in exchange for 20+ links? I think that’s a pretty good deal, if it’s saving you time getting decent links in the long run.